8-Foot-Long Tiger Shark Mauls Italian Tourist To Death Off Caribbean Island

An Italian tourist was attacked and killed by a shark off a Caribbean island, media reports said Monday.

The 56-year-old man has been identified as Antonio Abruzzi. Abruzzi was swimming near a cliff off Colombia’s San Andrés island Friday when he was bitten on his right leg by an 8-foot-long tiger shark, AFP reported.

The incident occurred at “La Piscinita” -- known by locals for snorkeling -- located about 235 miles off the Nicaragua coast, and nearly 470 miles north of the Columbian mainland.

The victim was alive when he was rushed to a hospital, but he went into hypovolemic shock due to severe blood loss and died. The man had lost a large chunk of his right thigh, Yahoo News reported.

“There are diving programs with professionals in which sharks pass nearby, but nothing has ever happened," an island government spokesman confirmed, according to Infobae [Google Translate showed].

A video shared by The Archipielago Press on Twitter showed two sharks circulating the area following the incident. It remained unclear if any of these two sharks were responsible for the attack.

"These two ocelot sharks are the two sharks that this afternoon attacked a foreign tourist in the La Piscinita sector, causing his death," the caption read. "In the last two weeks, sharks have appeared in shallow waters north and south of San Andrés."

Following the incident, a video emerged on Twitter showing local authorities trying to get all remaining swimmers out of the water.

Tiger sharks are the second most deadly shark after great whites, although fatal incidents involving humans are still rare.

In February, a swimmer was killed by a great white shark off the coast of Sydney in Australia, another attack that officials said was extremely rare. According to International Shark Attack File – a U.S. website which has documented attacks since the 1950s and gathered reports dating to the 1500s – there were 11 shark attack related deaths in 2021.

The International Shark Attack Files also says that the odds of getting bitten by a shark are one in 3,748,067.